This book was unlike any other books that I have had the
pleasure to read. It is a historical novella based on historical records. The
author, Prof. Dennis Turner, had the good fortune of being given the task of telling
the stories based on letters that were stored in the archives of the Sister of
Notre Dame de Namur in Cincinnati OH. It was a treasure trove of firsthand
records from the letters written by the sisters who lived in Belgium during the
second world war. The sisters had
written assiduously about their experiences in German occupied Belgium at that time to their
sisters in the United States. Their accounts of the war form the foundation of
this story.
What makes this account unique is that the author chose to cleverly
weave a fictional account that is based on letters and historical records in
order to unify the disparate accounts. He was able to gain access to both in
Cincinnati and in Belgium by serendipity, a nun of the Sisters of Notre Dame de
Namur in Dayton was a colleague of Prof. Turner’s wife, and he was drawn into
the project due to that friendship. The story telling is clever because of the
use of fictional narrative form to pull together the personal recollections from
the nuns’ letters while the author placed the personal accounts in historical
perspective as he integrated the fact from history with the personal accounts
of history. Prof. Turner has successfully worked all the details from the
historical and the personal into a cohesive and cogent narrative, allowing us
to delve into the minutiae of the effects of war on those affected by war as
well as giving us allowing us to see history from a most personal and intimate
view point. It is no surprise that the research is impeccable and the attention
to details extraordinary. The author is a professor of law at the University of
Dayton and a renowned law expert. His undergraduate degree in History no doubt served
as an invaluable compass for the directions that this book and shaped the organization
of the narrative. The impeccable research
on the letters, the stitching of the details into a cogent and flowing form, and then
integrating the bits into a readable and interesting whole was a labor of love.
The story revolves around a fictional character, sister
Christina, an amalgam of all the sisters who wrote the letters. Prof. Turner gave
the character life by giving her a midwestern life, she is an American nun from
Dayton Ohio. The opening chapter shows Sister Christina a brief background: her
upbringing, her world views, and her reason for pursuing the religious life. This
background chapter gives the reader a peak to her as a character and to explain
who she is as well as give a boost of realism to the narrative.
The story proceeds with sister Christina travelling to
Belgium in 1938 to join the Sisters of Notre Dame of Namur. She had been trained in the Cincinnati motherhouse
but needed to complete her training in Belgium.
As a side note, the author did the readers a great favor by making
three critical decisions: one is to name the chapters with the time and the
place to note when and where the action takes place; the second critical
decision is to provide an extensive and complete set of end notes. The third decision
was to include several photos, both old photos taken during the period of the
story and during Prof. Turner’s research trips to Belgium. All three decisions paid dividends as I was
able to trace the story chronologically and me to answer the critical question:
which part of this narrative is historical. The pictures gave me the reassurance
that I was indeed reading about real people and real places. The author did not
overtly insert too much fictional accounts to entice the reader, he stayed true
to the story he was given.
The story is told in chronological format. For those of us
who are somewhat knowledgeable about the Second World War the dates helped put
the story in perspective. The Germans had not yet invaded Belgium as the story began,
the narrative picked up during the diplomacy phase of the negotiations as
Belgium was attempting to ward off the inevitable. Sister Christina related some
of the realpolitik during the negotiations between Belgian King and the Germans.
This detail added yet another interesting perspective to the story without
seeming pedantic.
Some of the initial narrative
was devoted to describing the daily lives of the nuns. Prof. Turner described a
typical day in the life of a nun in Belgium during the 1940s. It was not an
easy life obviously; the details evoke strong feelings of admiration and some
disbelief, but this part of the book laid the foundation for the reader to
understand the nature of Sister Christina’s story.
As the drumbeat of war became louder in Belgium, numerous travails
befell Sister Christina and the nuns in her abbey as she navigated the changing
fortunes of war. We were able to experience the war through the eyes of Sister
Christina and the nuns. Sister Christina related the conditions of the abbey as
well as the shifting sands of circumstance that are both interior and exterior
to their narrow existence in the abbey. The material hardships were immense while
being under German occupation added an immense amount of terror to their psychological
hardship. At the same time, the narrative was inspiring because of how the
sisters were able to improvise, adapt, and overcome the material and
psychological hardships that fortune dealt them.
The stories about the
cleverness of the nuns as they attempted to hide refugees, some Jewish children,
and wounded Americans within the abbeys were funny, terror filled, and tense,
they were harrowing and exciting at the same time.
Most of the dramatizations on World War Two in film and
television relates the battlefield narrative. It is rare to find a historically rigorous account
of civilians enduring the hardships of the war in Europe without Hollywood
dramatization. This book gives us a unique perspective and takes a different
turn from the familiar.
Another interesting side note is that these letters were
written after the nuns’ has had time to think, consider, and reflect upon their
experience, so they have had time to digest the meaning of these experiences
and placed their importance in the context of their life experiences, their
religious beliefs and training. The letters were indeed quite unique in their
sentiments. It is particularly fortuitous that Prof. Turner recreated the ethos of the time and place beautifully with
his deft handling of the material.
The book’s existence serves as a timeless reflection upon
the chaos of that man has wrought upon ourselves, the goodness and the badness
that the self-inflicted chaos had brought to the lives of those who experienced it. It was
an enjoyable and instructive sojourn into a time and a place that elicited my curiosity.
This is great story telling.
